Whether laws proved only by the canon of Difference are to be considered Empirical, is perhaps a question: their proof derives them from the principle of Causation; but, being of narrow scope, some more special account of them seems requisite in relation to the Primary Laws before we can call them Derivative in the technical sense. Many Secondary Laws, again, are partially or imperfectly Derivative; we can give general reasons for them, without being able to determine theoretically the precise relations of the phenomena they describe. Meteorologists can explain the general conditions of all sorts of weather, but have made little progress toward predicting the actual course of it (at least, for our island): Geologists know the general causes of mountain ranges, but not why they rise just where we find them: Economists explain the general course of a commercial crisis, but not why the great crises recurred at intervals of about ten years. Derivative Laws make up the body of the exact sciences, having been assimilated and organised; whilst Empirical Laws are the undigested materials of science. The theorems of Euclid are good examples of derivative laws in Mathematics; in Astronomy, Kepler's laws and the laws of the tides; in Physics, the laws of shadows, of perspective, of harmony; in Biology, the law of protective coloration; in Economics, the laws of prices, wages, interest, and rent. Empirical Laws are such as Bode's law of the planetary distances; the laws of the expansion of different bodies by heat, and formulæ expressing the electrical conductivity of each substance as a function of the temperature. Strictly speaking, I suppose, all the laws of chemical combination are empirical: the law of definite proportions is verifiable in all cases that have been examined, except for variations that may be ascribed to errors of experiment. Much the same is true in Biology; most of the secondary laws are empirical, except so far as structures or functions may be regarded as specialised cases in Physics or Chemistry and deducible from these sciences. The theory of Natural Selection, however, has been the means of rendering many laws, that were once wholly empirical, at least partially derivative; namely, the laws of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and of their adaptation in organisation, form and colour, habits and instincts, to their various conditions of life. The laws that remain empirical in Biology are of all degrees of generality from that of the tendency to variation in size and in every other character shown by every species (though as to the reason of this there are promising hypotheses), down to such curious cases as that the colour of roses and carnations never varies into blue, that scarlet flowers are never sweet-scented, that bullfinches fed on hemp-seed turn black, that the young of white, yellow and dun pigeons are born almost naked (whilst others have plenty of down); and so on.